A reminder of things past:

• In 2006, even in Canada, we had to contend with snide comments from George Stroumboulopoulous (who never apologized) and Bob Magee at CHFI (who apologized graciously).
• In 1998, France’s win against Brazil marked the beginning of a new wave of surrender jokes in America including Letterman’s Top Ten: “Top Ten Signs France Is Celebrating Their Soccer Victory: 8. Surrendering to Germany.”

Conan O’Brien had been invited to Toronto in early 2004 and aired one of the most vile anti-Quebec and anti-French sketches ever. This comedian’s associate, Robert Smigel and his hand puppet Triumph, caused such a stir the issue was raised in Canada’s parliament.

The very next day, we hand delivered a letter to Conan’s hotel outlining the facts behind French Bashing and seriousness of the issue in the context of Canada’s political and social makeup. We were not the only ones to voice our concerns.

Conan O’Brien apologized.

James Douglas Muir Leno on the other hand has never shown any form of remorse for his insensitive and downright relentless bashing of the French. Having aired tasteless sketches and over 40 anti-French jokes between 2003 and 2006, Leno became the embodiment of French Bashing in American pop culture: from surrender jokes to jabs about our cleanliness, cowardice and duplicity.

In 2006, we drove across the United States to donate a box of books on French history to Jay Leno. We dubbed the operation Educating Jay and a documentary is currently in post-production. Leno never acknowledged our efforts and in a somewhat related story also refused to meet the Consul General of France in Los Angeles despite an open invitation.

One of these two men proved to be a true gentleman, able to accept criticism and apologize for his offences.

The other slandered the memory of the French Resistance and believes the French as a nation and people should be held in perpetual contempt.

Guess who we’re rooting for.

Read more :

• Conan O’Brien
  • Conan O’Brien exports hate speech to Canada
  • Conan Apologizes to Canada – Conan Apologizes to Quebec
• Jay Leno
  • Educating Jay – Our very long list of articles
  • Leno’s Anti-French Materials

I loathe thee.

Not so much for making fun of Sarkozy, he’s a public figure so he’s fair game, but for your utter disrespect for the most traumatic event in our history. Sure the headline is from the Onion (We know it’s satire – but why mention it? That’s the issue we have), but you think it is worthy of attention when discussing France’s Foreign Policy. You see, the 1940 surrender was not about surrender monkeys nor a ten minute battle. It was about being crushed by the most advanced army the world had known and being betrayed by our leadership.

Not only is making fun of 1940 as offensive to the French as 9/11 jokes are to you, but we were not alone in being crushed. Yet I have never seen a British Surrender Joke. Luckily for the British, after 100 000 French soldiers died in 47 days (more than Vietnam, Somalia, Beirut, Iraq and Afghanistan together), the British were able to evacuate Dunkirk with most of their men, taking advantage of a natural barrier called the English Channel.

But what really grates my nerves, and the nerves of 200 000 French citizens who live in North America, is that you, and so many others, have turned this historical event into a character trait. Check out twitter. It’s two surrender jokes a day …

“Mexicans are Lazy. British have bad Teeth. Blacks like Chicken and the French Surrender”. Welcome to the world of prejudice and of cultural reductionism. But since we – the French – don’t have a strong voice nor lobby in Washington to remind you and your ilk of your offense, you think you’re still funny …

It’s been seven years of Anti-French garbage in the US media from Bill O’Reilly, Jay Leno, Howard Stern, Conan O’Brien, Glenn Beck, Dennis Miller, Regis Philbin, David Spade, Craig Kilborn, SNL all edged on by the Bush Cheney administration, yet you are oblivious to the fact this was nothing more than a political kiss shot in the build up the Iraq war.

Bridget Johnson’s Blog @ About.com – Bridget Johnson is the online editor at The Hill in Washington, D.C.

On average, about a dozen or so anti-French jabs are written on twitter per week, most of them being some form of “French Surrender” joke. While some are deliberately trying to be offensive, others are living proof there is a “long tail” to America’s recent spate of French Bashing.

A few examples from within the last day or so:

• @timchi – “You can try and run over a french bulldog but it would surrender first”
• @asianlunatic – “Mantastic: When ur in France for holiday, the French will surrender to u, just to be on the safe side.” 
• @JohnHancock61 – “Great movie line from Flushed Away: Lead French frog: To action! French frog commandos: We Surrender!”
• @Simon4365 – “ahhhh the weekend or as the French say “we surrender”!!!” 
• @Hondo11 – “I’ll say it. Pietrus is not only French (known to surrender) he looks strikingly erily to a Primate. FACT” 
• @macslash – “It’s nice to hear Serlet attack Windows with a French accent. Would have expected him to just surrender.”

While most comedic outfits have abandoned French Bashing, especially Jay Leno and his forty or so jokes about supposed French cowardice and propensity to surrender, legions of twitterers, bloggers and comment contributors have kept the myth of French cowardice alive.

Having turned a traumatic historical event of epic proportions into a timeless character trait, French Haters have woven prejudice against France and the French into pop-culture.

Thankfully, one of North-America’s most astute international columnists has decided to take the myth of French cowardice and surrender head on. I present to you, Eric Margolis and his column : “Getting to the truth about World War II”. Thank You Eric. Merci.

Here are a few excerpts:

“France’s army did not simply surrender or run away in 1940, as ignorant American Know-Nothing conservatives claim. “

“Britain’s well-trained expeditionary force in France was beaten just as quickly and thoroughly as the French, and saved itself only by abandoning its French allies and fleeing across the Channel. “

“France lost 217,000 dead and 400,000 wounded.  Compare that to America’s loss of 416,000 dead during four years of war in the Pacific and Europe.”

Eric Margolis is an award-winning columnist who contributes regularly to the Quebecor Media Company and the Huffington Post. His articles appear in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Times of London to name a few. Eric Margolis has also appeared on CNN, BBC, France 2, France 24, Fox News, CTV and CBC.

See also: French Bashers hit twitter @ Miquelon.org

To find and respond to French Bashers on twitter, check out these searches :

• “French surrender”
• “Arrogant French”
• “Surrender monkeys”
• “Hate French”

Examples

1. “nØbama apologizes to France for America leaving so many crosses on French hill sides during WWII. Americans have been arrogant, we are arrogant” -  @TPO_Hisself.
2. “French toast? Threaten it with your knife and it will surrender.” @davidpowellbham
3. “Q. Why dont they have fireworks at Euro Disney? A. Because every time they shoot them off, the French try to surrender.“  @JessicaJayyy
4. “rude, ignorant, racist, jealous, envious, inert, thick, stupid, paranoid ! but too dumb to be arrogant thats the french” @facunditas
5. @timchi – “You can try and run over a french bulldog but it would surrender first”
6. @asianlunatic – “Mantastic: When ur in France for holiday, the French will surrender to u, just to be on the safe side.”
7. @JohnHancock61 – “Great movie line from Flushed Away: Lead French frog: To action! French frog commandos: We Surrender!”
8. @Simon4365 – “ahhhh the weekend or as the French say “we surrender”!!!”
9. @Hondo11 – “I’ll say it. Pietrus is not only French (known to surrender) he looks strikingly erily to a Primate. FACT”
10. @macslash – “It’s nice to hear Serlet attack Windows with a French accent. Would have expected him to just surrender.”

South Park’s French Bashing Explored.

The world of cartoons is a powerful way to get out any message you could never achieve with traditional actors or more conventional means. Much like Aesop’s fables, the use of animated characters often serves as a vehicle for political and social satire that avoids serious scrutiny. After all, it’s just a cartoon right?

The Simpsons, Family Guy, King of the Hill and South Park have all achieved success through poking fun at our collective hypocrisies or our contradictions. Unfortunately, when empowered with such a potent vehicle, the creative teams behind these cartoons sometimes let their own prejudices show through.

The Simpsons famously entered the fray of Anti-French prejudice with several barbs, most notably the “Cheese eating surrender monkey” epithet spoken by Groundskeeper Willie in an episode aired on April 30, 1995. In another episode, the character Lenny is also used as a vehicle for Anti-French stereotypes: “I’m shaking like a French soldier!”. Anti-French prejudice from the Simpsons is also evident in licensed games such as “Medal of Homer” (See note 1).

Matt Groening disputed his association with that now famous Anti-French slur: “That was not the original context. It was all about Willie yelling at students in a French class. People took that expression out of context (…) Besides I adore France, to be associated with this was insulting” (See note 2). Given the Simpsons long record of Anti-French attitudes, Matt Groening’s comments can only be considered as pure hypocrisy. But enough with this antiquated series that overstayed its welcome 6 years ago.

Last Wednesday, South Park aired an episode ripped from the headlines that deals with Somali pirates. At one point a French crew surrenders to children wielding toys. In another scene, another characters exclaims: “they were French so of course they surrendered immediately”.

South Park’s late foray into the world of French Bashing is not only regrettable, it proves once more that anti-French prejudice is so entwined in American pop-culture that it will take monumental efforts on our behalf to undo the harm done by years of laissez-faire.

In the meanwhile, little can be done with our limited means. We can however let the creators of South Park know how we feel with it comes to mocking the most tragic event of our recent history or we can also share our opinions with the myriad of bloggers, writers, columnists out there who are applauding this new Anti-French jab like circus seals.

(1) Miquelon.org article on Medal of Homer
(2) Source: Interview with Erwan Cario, July 25th 2007

Related links

• South Park Episode 7, season 13 “Fatbeard”
• Entertainement Weekly by Ken Tucker who thinks this is a “funny depiction of the French as pretentious cowards”
• AvClub.com – tv.ign.com

We at Miquelon.org expect a spike in Anti-French and Anti-SPM sentiment in the Canadian media and press in the next few days. French citizens in Canada are advised against engaging in conversations on this topic and should refer any queries to websites that deal with the history and news of the islands.

• News from and about Saint-Pierre & Miquelon (English): radiobarachois.net
• Continental Shelf Committee (French only) : spm.org
• Saint-Pierre & Miquelon History (primary sources): grandcolombier.com
• Saint-Pierre & Miquelon General Information: st-pierre-et-miquelon.com

“They say this other guy is unpatriotic, or this guy likes French people. That’s what they said about Kerry (…) They try to make it out like Democrats aren’t tough enough, aren’t macho enough. It’s the same strategy.” - Barack Obama, August 18, 2008. Sources: IHT – FOXNews – ABC News

First “joke” listed: “What’s the shortest book ever written? French War Heroes.”

Well this is a great start…

Next joke: “When I was in high school, I was in the French club. We didn’t really do anything. Every once in a while, we’d surrender to the German club” – Brian Kiley

Then we’re treated to some Fresh “Quotes About the French” most of which were already indexed by us in the French Bashing section of the site.

“As far as I’m concerned, war always means failure.” – Jacques Chirac, President of France
“As far as France is concerned, you’re right.” – Rush Limbaugh

“What do you expect from a culture and a nation that exerted more of its national will fighting against Disney World and Big Macs than the Nazis?” – Dennis Miller

“You know why the French don’t want to bomb Saddam Hussein? Because he hates Americans, he loves mistresses and wears a beret. He is French, people.” – Conan O’Brien

More jokes:

“American teenagers are six times more likely to get pregnant than French teenagers. And what does that tell you? It tells you that American teenagers are better looking. But I say, let’s learn from the French — don’t hand out condoms to high school students, take away their deodorant.” – David Feldman

But it gets better.

“Why did the Post Office have to recall its series of stamps depicting famous Frenchmen? People were confused about which side to spit on.”
“What is the first thing the French Army teaches at basic training? How to surrender in at least 10 languages.”
“Why do the French Smell? So blind people can hate them too!”

Reasons for being French?

• When speaking fast you  can make yourself sound gay.
• Experience the joy of winning the world cup for the first time.
• You get to eat insect food like snails and frog’’s legs.
• If there’s a war you can surrender really early.
• You don’t have to read the subtitles on those late night films on TV.
• You can test your own nuclear weapons in other people’s countries.
• You can be ugly and still become a famous film star.
• Allow Germans to march up and down your most famous street humiliating your sense of national pride.
• You don”t have to bother with toilets, just shit in the street.
• People think you”re a great lover even when you”re not.

Comedy Central’s jokes about the French seem to fall in three categories: (1) Surrender jokes, (2) Body Odour and (3) Hatred for the French.

Of course, according to the website’s terms and conditions, you must not use, allow, or enable others to use the Site, or knowingly condone use of this Site by others, in any manner that is, attempts to, or is likely to be ethnically offensive, discriminatory hateful … It would seem the “terms and conditions” are the biggest joke on joke.com.

Comedy Central is owned by MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International Inc.

• Contacting Comedy Central
• Contacting Viacom

Please be polite and informative when sharing grievances.
In other news, a notorious French Basher just signed a deal with NBC for a 10 o’clock show.

To President Bush and Vice President Cheney,

In the name of all French Expatriates across America, temporary migrants or permanent residents, in the name of Americans of French extraction, be they recent or distant, may they be Cajuns, may they be from Maine, Vermont or Michigan, I want to tell you how much you hurt and damaged the fabric of Franco-American relations, how much you made our lives difficult and painful. May your Anti-French political side-show go down in history as a vicious, petty and as a spiteful act of backstabbing cowardice.

When you and your administration pushed the truth aside to embark upon the folly that was the Iraq war, opposition from the French Government became your excuse to operate a systematic, top down Anti-French policy from within your own office; aimed not only at French interests, but against all things Gallic be they our culture, our language and our people.

Five years of Anti-French slander and vilification was thrust upon us by you direct from the White House, from your administration †, your members of Congress ‡, from your governors * and from your lackeys in the media ¶.

May all Americans and Franco-Americans alike, remember what you did. Not so much in respect to our citizenship or culture, but how it speaks volumes about how you trampled on dissent, opinion and opposition: true constitutional freedoms you swore to uphold one cold morning of January 2000.

We shall neither forgive nor forget…

Marc St Aubin du Cormier

† Richard Perle, Condoleeza, Rice, Donald Rumsfled, Paul Wolfowitz, Jed Babbin
‡ Roy Blunt, Ginny Brown-Waite, Tom Delay, Jack Kingston, Dennis Hastert, Peter King, Bob Ney, Walter Jones, Jim Saxton
* Mike Foster, Bill Owens
¶ Fred Barnes, Ann Coulter, Tucker Carlson, David Denby, Gordon Dillow, Steve Dunleavy, Tomas Friedman, David Frum, Frank Gaffney, John J. Miller, Richard Chesnoff, Kenneth Timmerman, Denis Boyles, Bill Gertz, Jonah Goldberg, Christopher Hitchens, Don Imus, Bill Kristol, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Ron Marr, Dick Morris, Ralph Peters, Gary Schneider, Michael Smerconish, George Will …

We agree. However, this is the same Christopher Hitchens who once wrote such brillant anti-French prose “The rat that roared” – “There is of course another France—the France of Petain and Poujade and Vichy and of the filthy colonial tactics pursued in Algeria and Indochina.” – “French companies and the French state are owed immense sums of money by Saddam Hussein. We all very much hope that no private gifts to any French political figures have been made by the Iraqi Baath Party, even though such scruple on either side would be anomalous to say the very least.”  – “(Chirac) the vain and posturing and venal man who, attempting to act the part of a balding Joan of Arc, is making France into the abject procurer of Saddam. This is the case of the rat that tried to roar.”

How times have changed.

But calling the French “Frogs” seems to be just fine for Bill Saporito, business editor of Time magazine. In a piece titled “How We Became the United States of France”, Saporito wallows in plenty a stereotype, buy they all pale in comparison with this blantant use of an ethnic/cultural slur.

“You just know the Frogs have only increased their disdain for us, if that is indeed possible. And why shouldn’t they?”

We believe this incident shows a complete lack of professionalism, a profoundly offensive use of an ethnic/cultural slur in a major American magazine. Even Bill O’Reilly and Jay Leno showed more respect for the French!

References: Time.com
Sources: Wikipedia (Ethnic slurs) – Wordie.com (Ethnic slurs)
Dictionary entries: 4. often capitalized usually offensive: frenchman (Merriam Webster) – noun [C] UK OFFENSIVE a French person (Cambridge dictionary) – (often initial capital letter) Slang: Disparaging and Offensive. French or Frenchlike. (Dictionary.com)

Complaints (please remain polite and informative)
Letters to the editor: letters (at) time.com
Bill Saporito: bill_saporito (at) timemagazine.com (unverified)
Merci à D.B.

Hurdle number three is a chance meeting between “Diborah” and her former lover, a self-sufficient, beret wearing arrogant Frenchman named François.

This commercial reminds us once again that in eyes of Hollywood (and America’s creative forces), that the French are a Foreign Lesion…

Mars North America is the parent company that produces m&m’s, Snickers, Twix, Musketeers, Skittles, Starburst and many other products.

See the commercial at Twix.com and if you wish to send feedback use their contact form. Please be polite and informative.

A bit of humor on the campaign trail is a great way to engage your crowds, however your incessant jabs at France are way passed their due date. Your musings on France’s purported Anti-Americanism, specifically in presidential circles*, is not only inaccurate; it only serves to perpetuate Anti-French attitudes in your electorate and your party.

For the last five years, Republicans have bashed France and the French with complete impunity and you were no stranger to this form of trickle-down hatred**.

You are running for President of the United States of America not for Last Comic Standing.

Sources: Reuters – Miquelon.org – Associated Press (Yahoo.fr)